Right and Left React to a Prospective DACA Deal Between Trump and the Democrats

The political news cycle is fast, and keeping up can be overwhelming. Trying to find differing perspectives worth your time is even harder. That’s why we have scoured the internet for political writing from the right and left that you might not have seen.

From the Right

With this deal, Trump has betrayed his core followers and a significant campaign promise — the most startling such turnabout since the first President Bush went back on his “read my lips, no new taxes” pledge.

Mr. Podhoretz says he supports President Trump’s move to strike a deal with Democrats on replacing the Obama-era Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals program that temporarily shields 800,000 young immigrants in the United States illegally from deportation. But he nonetheless sees it as a betrayal of the president’s core supporters. Mr. Trump is “abandoning his true believers in favor of an explicitly anti-ideological, anti-partisan approach,” he writes. Mr. Podhoretz sees no grand strategy in the president’s plans: “He is not a systematic man. He is an improviser.” Read more »

“Trump’s ascent likely dates back to Obama’s decision to unilaterally grant amnesty to a portion of the illegal alien population”

Mr. Law works for FAIR, a group that advocates policies that would restrict immigration to the United States. In this piece, he reviews the recent legislative history around the so-called Dreamer class of immigrants and its political implications. Mr. Law also proposes border security measures, immigration monitoring provisions and conditions for “limited amnesty” that he would consider palatable to conservatives as part of any negotiation.

“With a stroke of his pen, Trump could simply direct the IRS to favor American businesses that hire persons legally permitted to work in the U.S. This policy of Affirmative Wage Deduction (AWD) would cause an instant exodus of undocumented immigrants, potentially recoup billions of dollars in federal tax subsidies, and turn off the employment magnet that now draws thousands of illegal immigrants to breach our borders.”

Mr. Barulich finds an alternative to passing immigration policy changes through the legislative process by looking to the tax code. With specificity, he offers regulatory efforts that he argues would lead to “millions of illegal immigrants employed in the hospitality, meatpacking, agriculture, construction, and garment industries” being “replaced by citizens.” His prescriptive pitch: “The president should stop blaming Congress for inaction on the concrete wall. He should keep his promise to his supporters and sign an executive order to create this ‘big, beautiful digital wall.’”

From the Left

“There’s no particular way this helps Democrats proactively gain political capital.”

The Slate analysts focused on the perspective of the Democrats, the political ramifications and likelihood of achieving preferred policy outcomes through a potential bipartisan deal with the Trump administration. The writers suggest that the Democrats “have some political capital to spare at the moment, especially on an issue that could conceivably end up depressing the far right’s enthusiasm.” But ultimately they advise caution, arguing that even a political and policy win for Democrats risks provoking Mr. Trump to take another undesirable action “just to appease the more rabid factions of his base.” Read more »

“Going back to the Reagan administration proceeding to the Clinton years, the Bush years, and the Obama years, we have exorbitantly linked the criminal justice system with the immigration system. So we’ve stacked an immigration law enforcement apparatus on top of a racially biased criminal law enforcement apparatus, and not surprisingly that has led to a racially biased immigration law enforcement apparatus.”

Professor Hernández of the University of Denver studies the intersection of criminal law and immigration law at his blog Crimmigation. In this interview — released just before the news of the immigration negotiations was made public — he takes a long look back at the legal constructs framing the current debate, specifically the “binary of immigration law that’s existed for several years that states that there are ‘good’ immigrants and ‘bad’ immigrants.” Professor Hernandez argues that “making policy assessments about the moral worth of individuals is a really slippery because we’re talking about people. People are not easy to characterize; we’re a mix of good and bad.”

“Trump should set aside his insistence on his silly wall — which even many of his fellow Republicans dismiss as unnecessary and excessively costly — and put the well-being of the Dreamers ahead of his ill-advised campaign promises.”

The Editorial Board makes their point pretty plainly: “We hope the president and leaders of both parties in Congress can find a way to make this work.” They cite fairness and allude to public polling that indicates that “most of the American people” agree with a path to citizenship for this cohort. They point out that “these are people, after all, who often have spent little time in the country where they were born, speak only English and have been brought up as Americans. To qualify for DACA protections, they had to be in school or have graduated or to have been in the military.”

And Finally, From the Center:

“The world according to Donald J. Trump is a constantly shifting place, filled with tenuous alliances and mind-twisting deals that may be more or less than they appear at first glance. In pursuing a deal with Democrats on hot-button immigration issues, Trump is challenging forces in both parties in ways that are fundamental to their identities.”

The ABC analysts look at the political stakes for congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle. They say that President Trump has “shown his interest is not in bipartisanship but in cutting deals that enhance his own standing. By bringing Pelosi and Schumer close, he may be boxing them in.” That’s the concern he lays out for Democrats. For Republicans, the calculus appears a bit more obvious: Mr. Trump is “setting aside a key campaign promise in the interest of a proposal that immigration hard-liners consider an apostasy.”

“Trump’s position on DACA has been softening for some time, but his apparent deal with Pelosi and Schumer, and his tweeted support for allowing Dreamers to stay, cement a monumental shift.”

Mr. Graham looks back at his reporting from the 2016 campaign trail to understand some of the anger and frustration on the right over the seeming change in policy positions from the Trump administration. As one man in Fayetteville, N.C., is quoted as saying at the time: “Everyone else is a puppet. He says what he wants to say. Everyone else is controlled by political correctness.” Mr. Graham compiles quotes like these alongside the statements made at Trump campaign rallies and concludes that “it turns out the candidate’s coarse rhetoric really was just rhetoric, and Trump isn’t really all that different.”